ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on production planning. It shows why forecast-based production scheduling usually leads to expediting, high levels of inventory, and poor delivery performance. The chapter discusses the concept of pacemaker—why they only plan at one point and how to decide where that point is located in their process. It shows how to use a load leveling box to control the rate of release of work to production. The chapter helps in selecting the pitch interval for the process—deciding how much work to release to production and how often to release it. It describes how to decide the sequence of production and level out their product mix using repetitive flexible supply and product wheels. Releasing production at a single pacemaker process and leveling the rate of release at a pitch interval greatly simplifies the scheduling of production. For many processes, it does not matter which sequence the orders are released in.
